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Prospects for detecting early warning signals in discrete event sequence data : application to epidemiological incidence data
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Southall, Emma, Tildesley, Michael J. and Dyson, Louise (2020) Prospects for detecting early warning signals in discrete event sequence data : application to epidemiological incidence data. PLoS Computational Biology, 16 (9). e1007836. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007836 ISSN 1553-7358.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007836
Abstract
Early warning signals (EWS) identify systems approaching a critical transition, where the system undergoes a sudden change in state. For example, monitoring changes in variance or autocorrelation offers a computationally inexpensive method which can be used in real-time to assess when an infectious disease transitions to elimination. EWS have a promising potential to not only be used to monitor infectious diseases, but also to inform control policies to aid disease elimination. Previously, potential EWS have been identified for prevalence data, however the prevalence of a disease is often not known directly. In this work we identify EWS for incidence data, the standard data type collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or World Health Organization (WHO). We show, through several examples, that EWS calculated on simulated incidence time series data exhibit vastly different behaviours to those previously studied on prevalence data. In particular, the variance displays a decreasing trend on the approach to disease elimination, contrary to that expected from critical slowing down theory; this could lead to unreliable indicators of elimination when calculated on real-world data. We derive analytical predictions which can be generalised for many epidemiological systems, and we support our theory with simulated studies of disease incidence. Additionally, we explore EWS calculated on the rate of incidence over time, a property which can be extracted directly from incidence data. We find that although incidence might not exhibit typical critical slowing down properties before a critical transition, the rate of incidence does, presenting a promising new data type for the application of statistical indicators.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine R Medicine > RC Internal medicine |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Life Sciences (2010- ) Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Mathematics |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Epidemics, Epidemics -- Mathematical models, Epidemics -- Prevention -- Data processing , Communicable diseases, Communicable diseases -- Detection, Communicable diseases -- Prevention -- Data processing , Emergency communication systems , Epidemics -- Safety measures, Communicable diseases -- Epidemiology -- Data processing | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | PLoS Computational Biology | ||||||
Publisher: | Public Library of Science | ||||||
ISSN: | 1553-7358 | ||||||
Official Date: | 22 September 2020 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 16 | ||||||
Number: | 9 | ||||||
Article Number: | e1007836 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007836 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||
Copyright Holders: | © 2020 Southall et al. | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 1 October 2020 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 14 October 2020 | ||||||
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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